See No Evil
by SimoneSez
Summary: With Kelly temporarily blinded and the bad guys closing in, Scotty finds a desert oasis for them to take shelter in... but gets more than he bargained for.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This is a short story I wrote several years ago, before there was even an Internet. Thought I would let it see the light of day again in e-format, for any fans out there who might enjoy it._

Darkness.

"You still with me, Kel?"

Kelly Robinson turned his head in the direction of his partner's voice. "I'm with you," he nodded. "Any unfriendlies out there?"

"I'd bank on it, yeah." Alexander Scott's words echoed in the metal drainpipe where the two men crouched. "How you doin'?"

Kelly ran a hand through his hair. The ends that had been singed in the accident felt like straw. "You mean other than the fact that I can't see? Just peachy."

"Well, you're not missing much – we're in a pretty average-looking mess this time, nothing particularly scenic."

"Lucky me."

Irony dripped from Kelly's remark, justifiably so. Their luck for the past twenty-four hours had been of one sort only: bad. Devastatingly, unbelievably bad.

The mission had been a bust from the get-go, hitting rock bottom the night before when their helicopter had been shot out of the sky, killing their pilot and dropping the two of them smack in the middle of no-man's land, leaving their adversary in hot pursuit and Kelly flash-burned and temporarily blinded.

At least he hoped it was temporary.

It had been a monumental effort on Scott's part to lead his injured partner over miles of uneven terrain, every step a potential pitfall. Finally, just before sunrise, the top-flight espionage team known collectively as 'Domino' had crawled, exhausted, into the drainpipe for a desperately-needed rest.

"You could leave me, you know," Kelly said conversationally.

"Yeah, I know." But he wouldn't. They _both_knew that.

"You got any better ideas?"

"I'm working on a few." Scotty sloshed through the bare trickle of muddy water toward the opening of the pipe and squinted into the early morning sunshine. "Think I'll take a little walk, actually. Maybe there's something out there that we didn't pick up on last night."

"Is it morning?" Kelly held his hand out toward the opening, tentatively seeking the warmth of the sun. "I can't even tell light from dark."

"Give it time, now…"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, all right."

Kelly's impatience underscored what Scott already knew: time was one thing they had very little of, and a secret agent getting blinded was about the worst thing in the world that could happen. Particularly to his partner.

Scotty climbed to the top of a nearby rise and scanned the bleak horizon. Nothing but empty desert and distant mountain peaks. They hadn't been too far out of Las Cruces, New Mexico when the chopper had been shot down. Yet, there was a distinct possibility that the rush to get away from Daegger the night before had led them farther away from civilization.

But the pipe had to mean drainage. And drainage meant…

Bingo. Scott spotted a thin curl of smoke wafting up from behind a nearby hill. He started towards the subtle sign of life, moving cautiously every step of the way. There was no telling where Daegger's men were. It didn't pay to be overconfident in this business.

The tin-roofed adobe house was settled in the hollow between two sandy hills dotted with scrub brush. Nearby, a small plot of land rimmed with low trees grew lush and green, looking more like a household garden than a cash crop. No vehicles in the driveway – only a tractor at the edge of the cultivated plot. Yet there had to be someone in the vicinity; the smoke from the chimney testified to that.

Scott made his way to the window and peered inside. An overhead fan turned lazily in the immaculate kitchen, circulating the aroma of fresh-baked bread that reminded him how hungry he was. Still nobody in sight. Noiselessly, he sidled toward the back of the low structure and stepped around the corner.

A mere six feet away, the startled girl at the woodpile dropped her armload of kindling. Scotty moved into plain sight and held up his hands very slowly.

"I won't hurt you, okay? I'm one of the good guys, honest I am. I'm sorry if I scared you."

Still there was no answer. "Okay, maybe you don't buy that. I can't say as I blame you." It was pretty unlikely that the girl was used to having scruffy-looking men she didn't know dropping in on her from out of nowhere, black or any other color; not in this isolated part of the country. Scotty's brain shifted into a higher gear. "Or maybe you don't speak English, is that it? What about _Español_?"

There were another dozen languages he was prepared to try, one by one, but the girl slowly brought her hand up and flexed her trembling fingers nervously, in a series of precise maneuvers that Scott immediately recognized… although it was one language the Rhodes Scholar wasn't conversant in.

"Oh, man…" he sighed. "You're deaf, aren't you?" She only stared at him. She couldn't be much older than twenty; her wide-eyed ingenuous expression lent to her youthful appearance. "You wouldn't happen to read lips or anything convenient like that, would you?"

He took her lack of response for a 'no'. "Wonderful. I can talk to just about anybody on any street corner in the entire world, and right here in the middle of the good old U.S. of A. I run into somebody who can't understand a word I'm saying." He tried smiling at her next, and that seemed to bridge the communication gap rather well – she smiled shyly in return. "If I ever get home, I'm gonna demand a refund for my college tuition."

Next he offered her the palms of his hands outstretched, very slowly. "Okay, nothing up my sleeve… I'm not going to hurt you, I promise." He kept up the patient, reassuring smile, which seemed to be their only hope for a mutual understanding anytime soon. "Are we getting somewhere? I sure hope we are, because I can't hang around here playing charades all afternoon… I got a friend stashed in a drainpipe who's probably getting kinda lonely by now."


	2. Chapter 2

Kelly listened. At first the lazy trickle of the water was the only thing he could hear, but gradually he realized the area was alive with sounds that came to him to be identified one at a time – a bird call, the scurry of a small animal in the nearby brush. Were there poisonous snakes in this part of the country? Of course there were.

"A sitting duck…" he murmured under his breath. He'd never felt so completely and utterly helpless, not even on any of the numerous occasions his life had been in serious jeopardy. There had always been something he could do – find a way out of the proverbial locked room, stage a creative diversion, or employ the old tried-and-true spy tactic known as 'making a break for it'.

Not this time. He was fresh out of ideas, completely dependent on Scotty to return and lead him out of this hiding place and on to the next one. The fresh, warm air on his face told him which direction was the way out, but not the faintest glimmer of light reached him no matter how he strained. He closed his eyes again, and the pain eased up a little. He didn't remember much about the crash. One minute they'd been airborne and speeding above the desert towards Albuquerque, and the next Scotty had been pulling him across the sand away from the flaming wreck. All they'd been able to salvage from the mission was the knowledge that they'd come a little too close to Daegger's center of operations out here in the high desert, not quite close enough to pinpoint its location, but the hornets' nest was definitely close enough to smell. As for the head hornet, he knew they were spies and intended to kill them. And he'd damn near succeeded.

A sudden heavy sound from outside stood every nerve in his body on end, and Kelly turned with his hands reflexively extended in a martial arts guarding stance. Then a familiar voice reached him through his darkness.

"Steady there, Ace. I come in peace."

"Would you mind knocking next time?" Kelly asked, letting his hands fall back to his sides. "Once for friend and twice for foe would be helpful… I can't tell the players without a scorecard, and I can't _see _the scorecard."

"Well, if you feel like hanging around here, that's okay with me."

"You have something else in mind?"

"I do indeed."

00o00

Scott led him in a circuitous route to the farmhouse, wary of being spotted. Along the way he briefed Kelly on the situation.

"A girl, huh?" was Kelly's first comment.

Scott sighed. "Let me remind you of something that might have slipped your mind: we're in more than a little bit of trouble here, and this is not the time or the place for you to go trying to line up a date to the junior prom."

"I hear you, I hear you."

"Great; then all you have to work at is understanding me." He knew Kelly well enough to be assured he didn't need any reminders to take their situation seriously, nor could he blame Kelly for wanting a diversion or two from what had to be some pretty grim inner thoughts at the moment. They had shelter now, and that was definitely a step in the right direction.

The girl watched from the kitchen window as they quickly closed the distance to the house. She opened the door and took Kelly's arm while Scott made a visual check from the doorway to make sure they hadn't been followed. At first pulling back from the sudden unfamiliar touch, Kelly had his conditioned reflexes under control in a couple of seconds and put his hand on hers.

"How does it look out there, Scotty?" he asked.

"Olly olly in free," his partner replied, carefully closing the door. "Looks like we're in the clear."

"That's what I wanted to hear."

"I'm about ready for something to go right myself."

Kelly explored the delicate, feminine hand that guided him across the unfamiliar room. "What does she look like?"

Scott considered the blonde's youthful curves. "She wouldn't be too bad, except for her teeth."

"What about them?"

"They're in a glass on the windowsill."

Kelly managed a laugh, a feat in itself under the circumstances. "It's fortunate for you, sir, that the lady didn't hear you say that."

He was leaning a little more heavily on the girl than his condition warranted, Scott had no trouble noticing. "Need a remind you, my friend, that we are…"

"… in deep trouble; yes sir, I do recall."

The girl's eyes, Scott noticed, never strayed from Kelly – input from her sight, her primary sense, was what she focused on. And it looked as though Kelly was already learning a few things about sensory enhancement – if his hand on her shoulder was any indication. Scott cleared his throat purposefully. "Fine. Her name's Rachel, that much I got from passing a couple of notes back and forth."

"Rachel. I like that. What else?"

"She's bald, weighs six hundred pounds, and chews tobacco. Anything else I can help you with?"

"No, thanks, that'll just about do it for me. You're all heart, Scotty."

"That's what they tell me."

Kelly had already employed his own information processing system, independent of his partner's caustic sense of humor. The silky strands of hair that brushed the back of his hand were blonde, he guessed. The slender fingers resting on his arm hold him six hundred pounds was undoubtedly an estimate on the high side. And far from smelling like tobacco, the girl had a clean, sweet scent about her that he found both pleasant and alluring. The picture his mind was painting for him was definitely an encouraging one. "How much did you tell her?"

"Only that you and I had a little accident and managed to get ourselves lost. Knowing more than that might not be too healthy for her in the long run. Next step is to find out exactly where 'here' is, in regards to Las Cruces or any other outpost of humanity in striking distance."

"Outstanding. I think that's your department, sir."

"What were you figuring on doing?"

"Me? Oh… well… I've been thinking about passing out…"

Even if it had been a joke it wouldn't have been very funny. Scotty managed to catch Kelly just before he would have slumped to the floor, maneuvered him to the sofa and got his feet up. Damn… Kelly's impressive reserve of strength had finally run out. Well, better here than in the middle of the desert; if he had to fold up, at least he'd picked a reasonably safe spot to do it in.


	3. Chapter 3

"Scotty...?" Kelly murmured, turning his head slightly.

Scott suppressed a relieved sigh. "Glad to see you've got your porch light back on."

Kelly reached up and examined the bandage on his cheek. "Do I have you to thank for this, Dr. Kildare?"

"I just cleaned you up a little, that's all." He watched as Kelly opened his eyes slowly. "Anything?"

"I think so… a little… there's some light."

"Maybe I missed my calling." He helped his partner sit up, noting that Kelly made a valiant effort not to groan. "How you doin, Ace?"

"I've been better."

"Well, while you were taking your coffee break, minus the coffee, I had a look around. Interested in what I came up with?"

"Oh, indubitably, sir."

Scott gauged Robinson's considerably poor color. The words were there, all right; Kelly was just as ready with his usual flip responses to simple yes/no questions as he always was, but he wasn't looking good at all. His angular face was taut with the strain of just staying upright.

A dozen possibilities flashed through Scott's mind, none of them good ones… a concussion, internal injuries? He himself wasn't feeling particularly chipper after having been knocked out of the sky and bounced off the hard-packed desert floor, but at least he was reasonably certain his own injuries were limited to a few bruises and a large dent in his ego.

Kelly wouldn't be likely to admit to anything if he could get away with it. It had taken him nearly an hour after they'd escaped the crash to finally mention that he couldn't see anything. That chewed at Scott. He understood it, and probably would have done the same himself if it had been his turn to get busted up this time instead of Kelly. That didn't mean he had to like it. He liked all his cards face-up before he decided how to play a hand.

"Scotty?"

He realized he hadn't been paying attention. "What?"

"You were saying you had a look around. What'd you find?"

"Well, one thing I wish that I'd found but didn't is a telephone. I guess that makes sense, considering our hostess wouldn't have much use for one."

"Where are we, anyway? Mars?"

"I believe we are in what my sainted grandmother always referred to as 'East Overshoe'. My sainted grand_father _had another word for it, unsuitable for mixed company."

"Where's the girl?"

Scotty had to crack a smile. Maybe Kelly wasn't as far gone as he'd feared. "She's around."

"We've got her caught up in the middle of this, you know."

"Don't worry about that. I've got everything covered."

"Do you now? That's good to know. Would you mind whipping up a pumpkin coach, then, or some other suitable transportation to convey the two of us the heck outta here?"

"Pumpkins are out of season."

"Sorry about that." Kelly's fingers probed the gauze and tape on his forehead. "Any sign of Daegger?"

"None. Maybe we really did lose him."

"Maybe." Kelly's tone indicated that he really didn't think so. "Maybe you better take another look, instead of sitting here staring at me and playin' Florence Nightingale."

Rachel entered the room just then, smiling when she saw Kelly was conscious. Scotty took that as his cue to exit. Leave it to Kelly Robinson – the man was truly amazing. Even in the middle of the desert, Kelly would always unfailingly end up in the house that had a pretty young occupant. It was magnetism or something; some law of physics had to apply that would explain it, but Scotty had never had the time to sit down and address himself to the precise calculations.

He stopped just shy of the kitchen door when he heard a sound on the back porch. In the next second his weapon was drawn and ready, his shoulder pressed to the doorjamb, silently ticking off five seconds while he waited to see if the sound would be repeated. There it was again… a low scraping noise, like someone trying to jimmy a springbolt open. Well, if somebody wanted in, Scott figured he'd just get the door for him – he kicked it outwards and stepped back, leveling his weapon at eye-height.

There was nothing in his sights.

In the next second, he felt something move past his leg at roughly the speed of sound, and he looked down just in time to see the back end of a small black cat cornering into the living room, hissing like escaping steam as it streaked across the floor. It was a draw which one of them was more startled. It would have been embarrassing, under almost any other circumstances.

"Scotty?" Kelly's voice reached him from the next room. "Anything wrong out there?"

"No, man." He replaced his gun in its shoulder holster. "Just letting the cat in."

Nothing he saw buoyed his spirits as he stood in the doorway and surveyed the vast expanse of empty landscape in the back of the small house. Mid-day sun reflected off the sand, sending wavy rivulets of heat rippling upwards from the baking ground. That kind of heat came right up through your shoes in less than an hour's time, but compared to what it would do to your brains, that was nothing.

How were they going to get out of this one?


	4. Chapter 4

Kelly accepted the cup brimming with ice water that Rachel placed in his hands, then he took a sip. He was half-tempted to pour some of it over his head, but in the relentless heat he knew how quickly dehydration could set in. The last water he'd had, last night, had been a capful of stale and tepid stuff they'd managed to squeeze out of the very bottom of the emergency canteen.

Rachel sat beside him on the couch. Kelly didn't have to see her face to know she was looking at him; the ability to know when he was being watched had always come naturally to him, and he had helped him out of more than a couple of tight spots over the course of his career. He gave her the best half-hearted smile his less-than-cheerful mood would permit and took another drink of water. The silence was strange; he felt compelled to break it. "This is great," he told her. "Thank you." No reply, but the sound of his own voice was nonetheless reassuring.

Her hand went to the bandage on his cheek, and he flinched slightly. "It's fine," he assured her. "Really. It's not as bad as it looks." How bad _did _it look, he wondered? "Don't worry."

She dropped her hand down to rest on his arm, a gesture Kelly wasn't altogether certain he was interpreting correctly. "You… uh… don't get many visitors out this way, I bet." Now the one-way conversation was as disturbing as the silence had been a minute ago; he felt awkward and incapable of reaching her, even though she was sitting right next to him, close enough to touch. "I wish I could talk to you." He ran his fingers tentatively across her cheek. Funny – he'd been so sure he knew how it would feel, from a considerable wealth of experience, but Rachel's cheek was warmer and smoother than any he ever remembered touching before. His fingers traveled over her features lightly, learning what they could, liking what they learned. "Or that you could talk to me."

Rachel's lips met his in a soft, hesitant kiss. "Now that's what I call communication," Kelly nodded. "Yes, I think I understand perfectly…"

A few seconds later he heard the unmistakable sound of his partner's very best attempt at subtle throat-clearing. "Back so soon?" Kelly asked, forcing himself to pull back a few inches from Rachel's warmth.

"You've gotta be more clear, I guess. I mean, if you want me to go for a long walk, you gotta say, 'Scotty, I want you to go for a _long _walk.' All you said was 'Scotty, go take a look outside', and I did that, and now I'm back. That was a _short _walk. Get the difference?"

"Clear as crystal. Thanks. I'll remember that."

Rachel got to her feet and headed back toward the kitchen. It was all Kelly could do to resist reaching for her hand, but he controlled the impulse. "Just so you know," he told Scott, "that wasn't my idea."

"Some kind of new world's record, isn't it?"

"_She_ kissed _me, _I'll have you know."

"Ordinarily I'd just leave and lock the door behind me, figuring it's none of my business, but I keep getting the feeling that you're having a hard time remembering how deep the trouble is that we are in fact _in_. Last time I measured, it was at chin height and rising. I think it's time we put together a plan for getting out of here, don't you? Daegger can't be all that far behind us. We already know we're in his neighborhood."

That was one thing Kelly hadn't been able to forget. "And what about Rachel?"

"What about her?"

"She doesn't know the danger she's in, and she couldn't defend herself even if we tried to warn her."

"She's just fine."

"So what if Daegger and the boys in the band show up here after we leave? What do you think would happen to her if they even suspected she'd been hiding us? We got her into this mess, and we can't just leave her here to fend for herself up against those odds. They're lousy."

"We can't just sit around here and wait for Daegger to sweep us up, either. Do you really need me to remind you we're numbers one and two on his hit parade at the moment?"

No, Kelly didn't need to be reminded. The part of him that was a professional knew it all too well. The part of him that was a human being, though, had to have its say every now and then. "You go ahead. I'll catch up."

Scott shook his head slowly, a wasted effort since Kelly couldn't see. "No way, man. That's crazy."

"What's crazy is that you won't admit I'm slowing you down. I barely made it this far. Do you think you can drag me along with you for another ten or fifteen miles dodging bullets all the way and not get cut down? You can't do it, Superman. Trust me. I'm a liability. Get out of here while you can."

"Yeah, I'll look real fine reporting in. 'Hey, where's Kelly?' 'Oh, well, I left him in the desert because he was getting to be too much of a drag on me, you know how it is.'"

"You trying to be funny?"

"I'm trying to get you to see reason for a change. What do you think would happen to the two of you if Daegger found you here? You think it'd go any easier on Rachel? You think you could do her any good? It'd go worse for her if they found you here with her, Kel, you know that. I won't even give you one guess how they'd try to break you. I'll tell you. They'd…"

"Don't."

Scotty was right again – infuriating, but right. Rachel would get the worst of it. They couldn't force Kelly to watch, but he didn't want to find out what the sound of her scream was like.

"I'll say it again," Scott went on. "Don't get involved."

"We _are _involved. And we involved an innocent person. And you're getting out of here. Rachel and I can hold out until you get back with reinforcements. We need to get the drop on Daegger this time and bring him in, once and for all. We're too close. Close enough to trip over him. You can feel it too, can't you?"

Scotty considered his options. They were terrible. Forget for a moment even that Kelly might have a point. Could he realistically expect to make progress across the relentless heat of the desert, dragging along someone who couldn't see and didn't want to go? It had been difficult enough to get this far already, and that with Kelly pushing himself to the limits of his endurance. He was making progress, yes; getting his strength back by degrees, and the fact that he could tell light from dark was vastly encouraging. But if he flatly refused to leave, what could Scotty do about it?

"You mean this," he said at last.

"I've never been more serious in my life," Kelly affirmed.

The black cat dozed by the window. Scotty didn't much like the look in its yellow eyes, so having them half-closed was an improvement. He got the distinct impression the cat knew something he didn't know. Moreover, that it wouldn't have clued him in even if it had been able to.

"Fine," Scotty said at least, hating the sound of the word. "Yours truly, Tonto, will hit the wagon trail, leaving the ever-popular Lone Ranger to do whatever it is he does when Tonto's not around to set him straight. Wash the horse, shine the spurs, send the cowboy suit out for dry-cleaning…"

Kelly's shoulders slumped in relief as he realized he'd prevailed. "Right. I'll just do that."

"This is the dumbest thing I've ever let you talk me into." Scott turned to leave the room.

"Scotty?"

"What?"

"Hurry back."

"No, man, you can't have it all your own way. I got three weeks of vacation time coming to me, and I'm starting now."

Kelly couldn't contain a knowing grin. "Yeah. Right. I forgot."

"Three weeks in Vegas… and then, if I can still remember where I left you, I might just report in and let 'em know where they can pick you up."

"You're all heart, Scotty."


	5. Chapter 5

The kitchen light was on. Kelly was pleased to realize that he could see that much without having to ask anybody. Yes, his vision was definitely improving.

He could also tell that the fuzzy silhouette in the doorway was Scotty. "You about ready to take off?" he asked, with what he hoped was a casual air.

"Yeah, about. It's dark enough, no moon. And forty degrees cooler than it was at noontime. According to the girl, it's between eight and ten miles to town as the crow flies, more than that by the road. I'm not sure I think too much of my chances of finding somebody to catch a ride with this time of night, so I figure I'll go overland."

Kelly nodded. "Well, you know where I'll be."

"I guess I shouldn't bother hoping you've changed your mind."

"No." Not an easy decision, but one Kelly was willing to stand by.

"Well, you watch out for yourself."

"You too."

Kelly stood in the doorway and listened as Scotty's footsteps faded across the hard-packed sand. This felt wrong. Knowing that didn't do any good, but neither did it keep him from taking one tentative step outside, the innate compulsion to stick with his partner nearly overruling the knowledge that this time following would likely get them both killed.

Rachel's hand touched his shoulder and he stopped. "Right…" he nodded. "I know. I'm not leaving. Don't worry." He wouldn't have been able to if he'd wanted to, even if the house was completely empty, even if there was no Rachel to begin with. The knowledge rankled him. Scotty was better off on his own this time.

The cat, however, was only too happy to slide past him and off into the desert night. Probably had a schedule to keep, Kelly mused… field mice to gut, small vertebrates to terrorize. He stepped back inside and closed the door before it could change its mind, and reached up to lock it. Rachel's hand found his, not entirely by accident. This time Kelly pulled away.

"I'm sorry, I really am… but the man's right. The less involved we are, the better it'll be for you." He knew she couldn't hear him, but somehow he didn't think she'd have any trouble translating his message.

00o00

The mantel clock struck four. Kelly remembered hearing three, as well.

How far had Scotty managed to get? Had he made it to town yet? What was a 'town' in these parts like, anyway? Would he find a well-stocked, rambling little version of old Dodge City, or a used-up ghost town that had been off the supply routes for thirty years?

Then another sound reached his ears.

It was a helicopter.

Now the question of whether or not Scotty had had time to reach civilization was more than idle speculation. Now it could be life or death.

The heavy _whuckwhuckwhuck_ of the rotor blades slicing through the air drew nearer. Who else but Scotty would be in a chopper all the way out here in the dead of night?

Did he really have to ask himself that question?

Kelly made it the few steps to the lamp and turned it off, pitching the room into total darkness. Where was Rachel? He stumbled towards the kitchen. The noise of the chopper was the only sound in the world now, close enough so that sand kicked up from the rotor pelted the window glass.

He made his way back to the darkened living room. If the next thing he heard after the chopper shut down wasn't Scotty's voice, he was in big trouble. Weaponless and still virtually sightless, his only hope was to even the odds and make sure that if _he _couldn't see, neither could Daegger.

After a very long minute, he heard the helicopter's engine cut off, and the roar of the motor tapered off into a mechanical whine, then a few more revolutions of the blade as the momentum died down and ceased. Then silence. Nothing reached his ears except for the sound of his own blood pumping. It wasn't Scotty. Scotty would have said something by now, would have called out as soon as he could be heard.

Footsteps. Back porch.

Kelly listened. No, something else. Closer than the porch. Maybe only the wind. Or the cat. He hoped.

A faint, frightened whimper from the direction of the kitchen had all his senses on red alert. Rachel. Kelly held out his hand in her direction, resisting the urge to speak her name, praying to touch soft hair, a thin wrist, anything. When his fingers found hers, he pulled her against him and stepped back against the wall.

The cold steel of the gun barrel that suddenly contacted the back of his neck brought him up short. "Don't hurt the girl," he said quickly. "She's got nothing to do with this."

"I wouldn't worry about her, Robinson." The voice was unquestionably Daegger's. "She's holding a gun to your head."

Kelly's mouth went dry. "No…"

"Don't be an idiot, Robinson. And don't move… my daughter is an excellent shot."

Kelly blinked when light suddenly flooded the room. Light…more than he'd been able to see earlier. A lot more. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a shadow when Daegger moved toward him. Even his peripheral vision was coming back. He spared himself a moment to feel relief. A short one.

"Where's Scott?" Daegger asked.

"Gone." The female voice very close to Kelly's ear had an odd cadence to it; flat, overarticulated. "Hours ago. I couldn't stop him. But Robinson was easy."

The speaker couldn't hear herself. Relief evaporated. _Rachel._

He'd been had, but he forced himself to sound casual… not an easy feat with the business end of a revolver jammed behind his ear. "Oh, you can lip-read. And talk, too. That's beautiful. Really. And all this time we thought you couldn't understand a word we were saying. You really had us fooled."

"It wasn't hard."

He forced an insincere smile. "And a sense of humor. Everything I always look for in a girl… that is, when I can see."

"Scott won't get far," Daegger said. "Our associates will pick him up and return him here. That way we'll only need one grave."


	6. Chapter 6

Early morning slowly filled the front room with golden light. Lots of it. Kelly watched shapes become tables and chairs, watched Daegger walk across the room to turn off the lamp as daylight took over, all without turning his head. Let them think he still couldn't see his hand in front of his face. The time might come when that kind of a surprise might come in handy.

A static crackle poured out through the walkie-talkie in Daegger's hand. "No sign of Scott yet," a disembodied voice reported over the whirring noise of a small plane's engine in the background.

Daegger punched the talk button. "Rachel sent him due south. The road is to the west, town to the east. There's nothing but desert from here to the Mexican border. Keep searching."

Yet another trap, Kelly mused, his jaw tightening. Scotty had taken Rachel's word at face value, and she'd deliberately sent him out into the desert with no hope of finding anything but sand and more sand. The heat of the day would be brutal, three-digit temperatures with no shelter from the pounding sun. Scotty would be lucky if Daegger's men found him before heat exhaustion set in.

Rachel… now there was a piece of work. She was still beside him on the couch, with none of the memory of their former intimacy apparent as she held the gun steadily trained on the general vicinity of Kelly's heart. She gripped it loosely with both hands, displaying a casual indifference that indicated she knew very well how to use it, and he wasn't willing to test her on that just yet.

The glossy black cat raced in from the kitchen with a resounding hiss, ears back tight against its sleek head, and slunk underneath the couch. Nothing about this cat was likely to make an animal-lover out of him, Kelly thought. The thing was always in a bad mood, and where had it come from anyway?

Where indeed… because he distinctly remembered letting it out last night.

Daegger turned to face Rachel. "They haven't found Scott yet."

"Well, he is kind of sneaky, you know," Kelly put in casually. "He could be anywhere. Right behind you, maybe."

"Very amusing."

In the next second, all three heads turned at the sound of a hammer on a handgun snapping into cocked position.

"I really could be, you know," Scott's unmistakable voice confirmed from the kitchen doorway. "Right behind you. You oughta look when somebody tries to give you a real broad hint like that one."

"You took the short walk this time," Kelly observed. "May I ask why you're not on your way to being burned to a crisp by the merciless desert sun, sir?"

"You wouldn't believe the size of the mosquitoes out there at night… this big one with rifle locks and searchlights convinced me that I ought to come on back before I got stung real bad… or _you_ did." He turned to Daegger. "Now, if I were you, I'd tell the girl to put the gun down."

"Tell her yourself," Kelly said. "She lip-reads."

"Can you pick 'em, or can you pick 'em?" Scott muttered. He faced Rachel. "Okay, you get the idea. Drop it, then push it over here."

She did so, with a surly look that spoke volumes about what she would actually prefer to do, and shoved the weapon toward Scott. Kelly bent to retrieve it.

"I must say, I'm pleased to see you," he told Scotty, checking the clip. "Pleased to see anything, actually." He leveled the gun at Daegger. "I like the way _this _looks, too."

In the next split second Daegger grabbed Rachel around the waist and held her in front of him as a shield. He backed up steadily as the two guns pointed at his head slowly lowered.

"Thank you, gentlemen." He opened the front door. "It's been a pleasure."

Kelly raised the gun again and his finger tightened minutely on the trigger. "Don't," Scott told him. "It's not worth it, man… they're both unarmed, and you'll hate yourself if you do what you're thinking about doing."

The helicopter rose into the first light of the new day unchallenged, leaving the two agents in a swirl of hot dust. "I can't believe we did that," Kelly said. "I can't believe we just let them go."

"It's okay, Kel."

"It's _not _okay."

"Yeah it is. I siphoned off almost all their fuel before I came inside."

Kelly turned to his partner with an admiring glance. "You didn't."

Scott nodded. "They'll probably figure it out pretty quick."

"Shame on you." Kelly watched the cloudy blur that was the helicopter clear the ridge and disappear from view. "Will they crash?"

"Crash? Nah. They might land a little harder than they want to, but they'll be all right. We can send somebody out to pick 'em up later, if we feel like it."

"And how do you suggest we go about getting our own selves out of here?"

"I call your attention to this magnificent piece of machinery." Scotty slapped the fender of the battered tractor like a used-car dealer. "It'll get us to the highway. We can hitch it from there."

"Didn't your mother ever tell you hitchhiking's dangerous?"

"Well, we're going to be very careful, you see… we're going to wait for a coupla church organists or a nice lady schoolteacher with a cute little puppy dog or something, and we're going to stay out of trouble from now on. You got that? O-U-T, _out._"

Kelly climbed up onto the seat of the tractor. "Tell me more about the nice lady teacher."

"She's married."

"Okay… does she have a daughter?"

"Yes." Scott knew what was coming, but he played into it anyway. "Yes, she has a daughter."

"Now we're getting somewhere."

"Her daughter knows karate. Her husband knows karate. Her cute little puppy dog knows karate. You mess with them and you'll find your head in another time zone."

"You've made your point, Scotty."

"Good. So there's just one more thing we need to agree on here."

"What's that?"

Scott held up a hand in front of his partner's face. "How many fingers?"

"Eleven."

"Kel, how 'bout letting me drive?"

THE END

_A/N: Thanks to all who read, and especially to those who commented! This is a shorter story than I normally write but it just happened to come in at this length and it felt right that way. I wrote it after taking a trip to New Mexico, where I couldn't help but picture Our Heroes trapped in the desert being pursued by an old adversary. Hope you enjoyed it._


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